The Mountain School at the Morija Museum Store

It has been a long and winding road for The Mountain School to get back home, but it has finally landed back in Lesotho at the Museum Store in Morija. This is the store attached to the country’s only real museum, and Morija is the town where the country’s first foreigners (the Frenchman Eugene Casalis and company) arrived to stay back in the 1830’s.

The Morija Museum’s curator, Stephen Gill, is a great resource who has received the stock of books I sent and placed them for sale at M190 each, which is almost $20. But this was as low as we could make the price; it’s inordinately expensive to ship to Africa! Nevertheless, it feels great to know that my friends in Lesotho can now have a real-life look at the book.

Up until now that wasn’t possible because people in Lesotho are very limited in their ability to purchase things online. Very few have credit cards, and many don’t have addresses or post office boxes at which to receive items. For them, there is simply no option of ordering something from Amazon and having it delivered.

Beyond that, even for those who have a computer there is trouble downloading. I don’t know the technical background involved, but I’ve worked with Lemeko, my most computer-literate former student, for months trying to get an e-book onto his laptop without success. So really the only choice is boxing up physical books in the U.S.A. and personally shipping them to a physical bookstore — and hoping customs fees are not unreasonable. That’s how it was done.

Again, thanks to Stephen Gill and the Morija Museum for being so helpful with the logistics, and also for the enthusiastic reception and review of the book. I love the idea of The Mountain School being there in the cultural heart of Lesotho.